The Civil War Trilogy: Gods and Generals / the Killer Angels / the Last Full Measure
Page 91
“No.”
“Well, nobody ever said they wasn’t good soldiers. Well, they’re Americans anyway, even if they are Rebs.”
“Yes,” Chamberlain said.
“Thing I cannot understand. Thing I never will understand. How can they fight so hard, them Johnnies, and all for slavery?”
Chamberlain raised his head. He had forgotten the Cause. When the guns began firing he had forgotten it completely. It seemed very strange now to think of morality, or that minister long ago, or the poor runaway black. He looked out across the dark field, could see nothing but the yellow lights and outlines of black bodies stark in the lightning.
Tom said, “When you ask them prisoners, they never talk about slavery. But, Lawrence, how do you explain that? What else is the war about?”
Chamberlain shook his head.
“If it weren’t for the slaves, there’d never have been no war, now would there?”
“No,” Chamberlain said.
“Well then, I don’t care how much political fast-talking you hear, that’s what it’s all about and that’s what them fellers died for, and I tell you, Lawrence, I don’t understand it at all.”
“No,” Chamberlain said. He was thinking of Kilrain: no divine spark. Animal meat: the Killer Angels.
Out in the field nearby they were laying out bodies, row after row, the feet all even and the toes pointing upward like rows of black leaves on the border of a garden. He saw again the bitter face of Kilrain, but Chamberlain did not hate the gentlemen, could not think of them as gentlemen. He felt instead an extraordinary admiration. It was as if they were his own men who had come up the hill and he had been with them as they came, and he had made it across the stone wall to victory, but they had died. He felt a violent pity. He said slowly, in memory of Kilrain, “Well, they’re all equal now.”
“In the sight of God, anyways.”
“Yes,” Chamberlain said. “In the sight of God.”
Tom stood up. “Better get moving, Lawrence, there’s a big rain coming.”
Chamberlain rose, but he was not yet ready to go.
Tom said, “Do you think they’ll attack again?”
Chamberlain nodded. They were not yet done. He felt an appalling thrill. They would fight again, and when they came he would be behind another stone wall waiting for them, and he would stay there until he died or until it ended, and he was looking forward to it with an incredible eagerness, as you wait for the great music to begin again after the silence. He shook his head, amazed at himself. He thought: Have to come back to this place when the war is over. Maybe then I’ll understand it.
The rain was much heavier now. He put on the stolen cavalry hat and blinked upward into the black sky. He thought: It was my privilege to be here today. He thanked God for the honor. Then he went back to his men.
The light rain went on falling on the hills above Gettysburg, but it was only the overture to the great storm to come. Out of the black night it came at last, cold and wild and flooded with lightning. The true rain came in a monster wind, and the storm broke in blackness over the hills and the bloody valley; the sky opened along the ridge and the vast water thundered down, drowning the fires, flooding the red creeks, washing the rocks and the grass and the white bones of the dead, cleansing the earth and soaking it thick and rich with water and wet again with clean cold rainwater, driving the blood deep into the earth, to grow again with the roots toward Heaven.
It rained all that night. The next day was Saturday, the Fourth of July.
“Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.”
—WINSTON CHURCHILL,
A History of the English-
Speaking Peoples
AFTERWORD
ROBERT EDWARD LEE
In August he asks to be relieved of command. Of the battle he says:
No blame can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish what was projected by me.… I alone am to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess and valor … could I have forseen that the attack on the last day would fail, I should certainly have tried some other course … but I do not know what better course I could have pursued.
His request is not accepted, although he cites his poor health, and he serves until the end of the war. He never again attempts a Napoleonic assault. When the war is over, he believes that the issue has been settled by combat, that God has passed judgment. He lays down arms, asks his men to do the same. His great prestige brings a peace which might not otherwise have been possible. He asks Congress for pardon; it is never given. Dies of heart disease in 1870, perhaps the most beloved general in the history of American war.
JAMES LONGSTREET
That winter he requests relief from command, on the ground that he no longer believes the South can win the war. Lee prevails upon him to stay. He is wounded severely in the Wilderness, 1864, but returns to be Lee’s most dependable soldier, his right hand until the end at Appomattox.
After the war he makes two great mistakes. First, he becomes a Republican, attempts to join with old comrade Grant in rebuilding the South. For this he is branded a turncoat, within two years of the end of the war is being referred to by Southern newspapers as “the most hated man in the South.”
Second, as time passes and it becomes slowly apparent that the war was lost at Gettysburg, Longstreet gives as his opinion what he believes to be true: that the battle was lost by Robert E. Lee. This occurs long after Lee’s death, when Lee has become the symbol of all that is fine and noble in the Southern cause. The South does not forgive Longstreet the insult to Lee’s name. At the great reunion, years later, of the Army of Northern Virginia, Longstreet is not even invited, but he comes anyway, stubborn to the end, walks down the aisle in his old gray uniform, stars of a general on his collar, and is received by an enormous ovation by the men, with tears and an embrace from Jefferson Davis.
His theories on defensive warfare are generations ahead of his time. The generals of Europe are still ordering massed assaults against fortified positions long years after his death, in 1904, at the age of eighty-three.
RICHARD EWELL
Serves with courage until the end, but as a corps commander he is fated never to achieve distinction. Of the Battle of Gettysburg he is later to remark: “It took a great many mistakes to lose that battle. And I myself made most of them.”
AMBROSE POWELL HILL
Never to take his place in the Richmond society he so dearly loved, so richly deserved. Five days before Appomattox, at the Battle of Five Forks, he is killed by a sniper’s bullet.
JOHN BELL HOOD
Loses not the arm but the use of it; it remains withered within his pinned sleeve for the rest of his days. Complains bitterly about the handling of the army at Gettysburg, is later given a command of his own: the Army of Tennessee. Defeated in Atlanta by Sherman, he spends much of the rest of his life justifying his actions in the field.
DORSEY PENDER
His wound grows steadily worse. An operation is performed within the month, at Staunton, but he begins to hemorrhage. The leg is amputated. He dies within the month. His wife attributes his death to the judgment of God.
ISAAC TRIMBLE
Wounded, is left behind to be captured by the enemy. Loses his leg, survives the war. Of the charge at Gettysburg he says: “If the men I had the honor to command that day could not take that position, all Hell couldn’t take it.”
JOHNSTON PETTIGREW
Survives the charge at Gettysburg with only a minor wound in the hand. Is shot to death ten days later in a delaying action guarding the retreat across the Potomac.
GEORGE PICKETT
His division is virtually destroyed. No field officer is unhurt. Of the thirteen colonels in his command that day seven are dead, six are wounded. His casualties exceed 60 percent. The famous Charge of the Light Brigade, in comparison, suffered casual
ties of approximately 40 percent. Pickett survives to great glory, but he broods on the loss. When the war is over he happens one day on John Singleton Mosby, on the way to see Robert Lee, and together they visit the old man. The meeting is, in Mosby’s words, “singularly cold.” After it is over, Pickett comes outside and says bitterly, “That man destroyed my division.”
JUBAL EARLY
Serves until near the end of the war, when Lee finds it necessary to relieve him because of complaints against him by citizens he has offended. His conduct after the war is notable for two episodes: He becomes the Southern officer most involved in trying to prove that Longstreet was responsible for the loss at Gettysburg, and he becomes the central figure in the infamous Louisiana lottery, which cost thousands of Southerners thousands of dollars.
ARTHUR FREMANTLE
Returns to England after three months in the Confederacy and writes a book on his experience, which is published in the South three months before the end of the war. It is a very readable and entertaining book, which predicts a certain Southern victory.
HARRISON
He vanishes from Longstreet’s records. Years after the war Moxley Sorrel attends a play, notices something vaguely familiar about one of the actors, recognizes Harrison. He goes backstage for a moment, they speak for a moment, but Sorrel is a gentleman and Harrison is a player, and there is no further connection. Nothing else of Harrison is known.
JOHN BUFORD
Never to receive recognition for his part in choosing the ground and holding it, and in so doing saving not only the battle but perhaps the war, he survives the summer but is weakened by wounds. In December of that year he goes down with pneumonia, and dies of it.
WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK
Survives the wound at Gettysburg. When the war ends it is found that his Second Corps captured more prisoners, more colors, and suffered more casualties than the entire rest of the Army of the Potomac. An enormously popular man all his life, in 1880 he runs for the Presidency on the Democratic ticket, against Garfield, but the country has had two terms of Grant and is weary of generals in high office, and so he is defeated, retires from public life. The package Lew Armistead sent Almira Hancock was Armistead’s personal Bible.
JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN
In August he is given a brigade. Shortly thereafter he is so badly wounded, shot through both hips, that he is not expected to live. But he returns to become one of the most remarkable soldiers in American history. Wounded six times. Cited for bravery in action four times. Promoted to brigadier general by special order of Ulysses Grant for heroism at Petersburg. Breveted major general for heroism at Five Forks. He is the officer chosen by Grant from all other Northern officers to have the honor of receiving the Southern surrender at Appomattox, where he startles the world by calling his troops to attention to salute the defeated South. He is given first place in the last Grand Review in Washington. For his day at Little Round Top he is to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In Maine he is elected Governor by the largest majority in the history of the state and returned to office three times, where he alienates political friends by refusing to agree to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
In 1876, elected President of Bowdoin University, where he attempts to modernize the school, introducing courses in science, de-emphasizing religion, and becomes involved in student demonstrations over the question of ROTC. Receives medal of honor from France for distinguished efforts in international education. When he retires from Bowdoin he has taught every subject in the curriculum except mathematics.
Dies of his wounds, June 1914, at the age of eighty-three.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL SHAARA was born in 1928 in Jersey City, New Jersey. After graduating from Rutgers University in 1951, he served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, was an amateur boxer, and a police officer. In 1960 he became a professor of creative writing at Florida State University, where he won a faculty-wide award for excellence in teaching. His writing career included the publication of some seventy short stories, beginning in the early 1950s in the heyday of science-fiction publications such as Astounding and Galaxy. Subsequent stories were published through the early 1970s in The Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and others. His first novel, The Broken Place, was published in 1968. Other novels include The Herald and For Love of the Game (published after his death).
Michael Shaara died in 1988 at the age of fifty-nine.
Praise for
The Killer Angels
“The best Civil War novel ever written … The descriptions of combat are incomparable; they convey not just the sights but the noise and smell of battle. And the characterizations are simply superb.… Shaara has managed to capture the essence of war, the divided friendships, the madness, and the heroism of fratricidal conflict.”
—STEPHEN B. OATES, author of With Malice Toward None
“[Shaara] writes with clarity and power.… His descriptions of the battle scenes are vivid and unsparing.”
—Newsday
“Akin to Hemingway … [and] Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage.”
—The Houston Post
“A compelling version of what America’s Armageddon must have been like … surefire storytelling.”
—Publishers Weekly
“You will learn more from this utterly absorbing book about Gettysburg than from any nonfictional account. Shaara fabulously, convincingly brings characters such as Robert E. Lee to life and makes the conflict all too real.”
—Forbes
“Literary wonders will never cease. Would you think it possible that after all the hundreds of books written about the battle of Gettysburg, both fiction and nonfiction, that… [this] novel about the battle could come out fresh, utterly absorbing, with the strong possibility that it may even turn out to be a classic? Well, read Michael Shaara’s … The Killer Angels and find out.”
—The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Maryland)
“Narrated as expertly as though Michael Shaara had been a participant in the battle of Gettysburg.”
—The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
“It’s at one and the same time an excellent, historical novel, a bitter anti-war tract, and a story filled with an amazing case of beautifully realized characters.”
—Daily Sun (Hudson, Massachusetts)
“An approach so fresh it is stunning.”
—St. Louis Globe-Democrat
“The Killers Angels could well be the best Civil War novel of this decade.”
—The News Leader (Richmond, Virginia)
“All in all it is a feast of reading, the best you will find for a long, long time.”
—The Chattanooga Times
“What makes Shaara’s novel an admirable effort, and one worth reading, is its sensitiveness to the time-spirit of the era. What it reveals is primarily men in context, men in action, and thought within the changing scenery of events. It is a genuinely appealing book.”
—The Charlotte Observer
“This is one of the best novels of the Civil War that I’ve read.”
—Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia)
ALSO BY MICHAEL SHAARA
The Broken Place
The Herald
For Love of the Game
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1998 by Jeffrey M. Shaara
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-190290
eISBN: 978-0-345-43850-8
v3.1_r1
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
The Last Full Measure
Copyright
To the Reader
Introduction
Part One
Chapter 1 - Lee
Chapter 2 - Chamberlain
Chapter 3 - Chamberlain
Chapter 4 - Chamberlain
Chapter 5 - Lee
Chapter 6 - Lee
Part Two
Chapter 7 - Grant
Chapter 8 - Lee
Chapter 9 - Grant
Chapter 10 - Lee
Chapter 11 - Grant
Chapter 12 - Lee
Chapter 13 - Longstreet
Chapter 14 - Hancock
Chapter 15 - Lee
Chapter 16 - Grant
Chapter 17 - Lee
Chapter 18 - Grant
Chapter 19 - Stuart
Chapter 20 - Lee
Chapter 21 - Chamberlain
Chapter 22 - Lee
Chapter 23 - Grant
Part Three
Chapter 24 - Lee
Chapter 25 - Chamberlain
Chapter 26 - Grant
Chapter 27 - Chamberlain
Chapter 28 - Grant
Chapter 29 - Lee
Chapter 30 - Grant
Chapter 31 - Lee
Chapter 32 - Grant
Chapter 33 - Lee
Chapter 34 - Grant
Chapter 35 - Grant
Chapter 36 - Lee
Chapter 37 - Lee
Chapter 38 - Gordon
Chapter 39 - Grant
Chapter 40 - Chamberlain
Chapter 41 - Lee
Chapter 42 - Chamberlain
Chapter 43 - Lee
Chapter 44 - Lee